Though I have not finished his essay, I thought I would share a few interesting quotes/thoughts I’ve noticed along the way. But before doing so let me address a question that may be asked by those who have read the essay, or those who may. No, I am not concerned by the narrator’s sincerity, nor am I concerned by either an aware or unaware irony; nor for that matter am I concerned with the fictive presence of the narrator. Here, I’m merely concerned with the thoughts and ideas themselves as such. So there you are. It seems such preambles are necessary in this age of irony of ours. So be it. And so let us begin:

“For to fool life away, seeking after the ideal, without comprehending the innocent enthusiasm which reminds youth that this is fleeting, time is fleeting--so to fool life away means an existence devoid of an idea (page 112).” An existence who’s name is child.

Or this from Sonnet 3

Or again, from Sonnet 5:

However sweet this might be to while away out time--more, much more, or is it less, must entertain. So at the least, Soren’s issue is propagation, but not merely so, as he says, “Marriage is a resolution, so also is it’s opposite, a resolution not to marry. For to fool life away….” As I mentioned Mr. Kierkegaard has many irons in the fire.

But do we agree that marriage is an act of the will: a resolution? Who would disagree? Those I suppose who have little time for free-will. But if marriage is a resolution, then is it not derivative of love? No! For while love is the fairest attendant on marriage, it is not its synonym. Or at least, so says Mr. Kierkegaard:

I’m not so certain of his pagan/Christian summation, but his conclusion, well, who would disagree? Many! I know. But then whether in agreement or disagreement, love cannot be a justification, the logical next step leading to marriage. It is not foreordained and necessary--even though routinely stated just as such. Such a fiction! And if love bespeaks the physical/erotic in one incarnation, and then is marriage as well, is contained in marriage, is then marriage merely a higher love? Or is something new made by resolution? Soren would say, and does say, that marriage cannot be the mere extension of love, and I’m inclined to agree. If anything, love is delimited in marriage and so is more by being less. I would have to agree with that last.

Well, we could dispute over Mr. Kierkegaard’s formulation, or his narrator’s if you prefer, on his ideality of love and what that means for love, or we could argue over the properties or property of love, if we were so inclined, and how many haven’t been, or we could acknowledge that christening marriage as love, as so many are wont to do, is nothing more than declaring marriage as whim‘s union.

Whim’s union, so reasons so many of our intellectuals, judges, and politicians, how then goes the reason that some are denied caprice; how is it that some are denied whimsical action and others not? Well, if you put it that way, what possibly could be said in opposition? So, they can find no reason not to define marriage to their liking, or rather banish marriage and put some capricious whimsical something, definition, in its stead: One which includes something declared as gay marriage.

And now for a little more Kierkegaard, just a few quotes to my liking, and I’ll not bore you with a this and a that and a therefore. But doubtless, they shadow in some guise or other our conversation:

But to continue with Kant’s formulation of knowledge, understanding, etc., as either belonging to the analytic or the synthetic. The idea of gay marriage is an extension of analytic knowledge. That is, the definition, knowledge, of a man joined to the definition of a man (or woman to woman) does not create new knowledge, but is an extension of the same definition. Such a union--gay marriage-- is sterile, or in reference to marriage, is celibate. The notion that the definition of marriage is being expanded is so self evidently false that its proponents are curiously blind to what they are advocating: the opposite of marriage, its antithesis.

Nor are the proponents satisfied with merely legalizing gay marriage. For no one believes for a second that those married in the same sex will say of themselves, “we are gaily married.” Such a self identification would be far more absurd today than say a hundred years ago, and for a very self evident and apposite reason.

Lets dispense with any lingering objections: All heterosexual marriages are synthetic, and all homosexual unions are analytical. All the same, at this point, we might shrug our shoulders and go our merry way. And so I would, except, that ideas have consequences. The idea of gay marriage manages to harm two groups with one action.

Banishing the definition of marriage will not of course destroy marriage; no more than its replacement will create gay marriage-- but it will make marriage an unnamed thing, a thing unmentionable in society.

“Jon,” you say, “that’s ridiculous,” you say. I say, would that it were so. But let’s extend the thought. Of course a man and woman will still be married, but what marries them we cannot say. Marriage will be an unnamed thing, yet, ubiquitous, and everywhere in the face of the new sensitivity, and as such, unmentionable.

“My wife,” and with that, in some circles, not a few, I have committed a faux pas. Nor is “my wife” the final destination, but soon it will proceed to moral opprobrium, and in some circles, doubtlessly has. To observe the obvious and say man or woman, as the distinction is appropriate, often invites doubt upon the speaker, who may shudder at the embarrassment felt by the set of persons to whom he is speaking. The set then, individually, as all choice is individual, judges him to be obstinate, malicious, ignorant, or perhaps courageous. Ideas have consequences.

“Surely,” you say, “you do not hold gay marriage responsible for this turn of events.” Of course not. Gay marriage is but one element in a set governed by an idea, proposition, supporting a post-modern worldview. Adam and Eve are ashamed to be naked before God. Post-modern Man is ashamed of nature: of the distinctions that nature has made; of the definitions that nature has provided without Man’s consent. Post-modern Man is ashamed of man, and to be inclusive, of woman.

The new pedagogy tells us so. With the simplest of acts we pay obeisance to the new pedagogy; so we say, persons, and likewise use any referent that hides the sex of the person so referred. To do otherwise is scandal: The mask has been ripped off pretense. The obvious must be hidden; the distinction must be disavowed. Man and woman must not stand naked before Man.

Is it not inhumane to enforce and coerce people into a charade? And with obvious distinction always there before our eyes, by the very fact of the male/female marriage, is this not a constant affront? Does it not in its unvoiced reality shout its distinct reality? and in so doing reveal the parody, even cruelly, by its very existence, the form and structure of gay marriage?

Does it need to be amplified that one of the worst pains humans encounter is our inability to shape the world, as we would. It is certainly the cause of so much pretense, and though a pretense unmasked before others is very painful, it is never so painful as an unacknowledged pretense revealed to oneself: Exposing, nay enforcing, just such a cruelty, pretense, on the gay community within our community is abominable. So much so that it can in part justify a protection of the gay marriage pretense. It would, except that such protection will and does compound the harm. Does anyone doubt that at some point even saying the word husband or wife will be well nigh hate speech? if not in law, then certainly in many quarters.

The distinction must be denied. Who can fault the gay community for projecting the cause of their pain out to those misbehaving cretins that observe distinctions? It is society’s fault if people are allowed to acknowledge distinctions. So society wishing to do good sets out to banish distinctions. What is true and real must be banished for the preservation of a just and admirable pretense.

So a second harm is justified and administered in order to protect the first harm. So now the heterosexual subgroup of humanity, like that of the homosexual subgroup, is admonished to pay obeisance to the pretense. But unlike the gay community that beats itself with righteousness, the straight community beats itself with guilt. The straight community, whether married or not, though especially for the married, is admonished to deny the particularity of marriage that is indissolubly founded upon the male/female union.

Guilt as everyone knows bears doubt as its consort. The birth of doubt undermines the very surety of marriage, both for the married and those considering marriage, and as marriage is the indispensable realization of the nuclear family, itself the indispensable bedrock of society, it is inevitable, foreordained, that guilt and doubt will leak into all the other institutional structures that compose society. Questioning structures, institutions, can be salutary, I admit, but too, it is never salutary, only destructive, when instigated by a pretense. Thus our second harm.

Yes, I would like to have just shrugged my shoulders. How much easier it would be to pretend, and yet, my conscience allows no such thing. I cannot pretend when unjust pretense spreads misery and harm. Because the question is not whether you or I think the gay community and its members should have license to marriage. No, indeed, it is not a question at all, but rather a statement of truth, however painful it may seem, marriage is not possible.

Liberty and private property go hand in hand. By dominating one the statist dominates both, for if the individual cannot keep or dispose of the value he creates by his own intellectual and/or physical labor he exists to serve the state.

This is self evident is it not. And yet what of lights the like of Cas Sunstein. (“I doubt not of your wisdom”: whose thought is gargantuan and of such matter that I would never vouch any other such of such a great man as he, for how great a man must he be to advocate theft’s honor.)

Mr. Sunstein, Mr. Levin tells us, is a leading “advocate of delinking liberty and property rights…” And where does Mr. Sunstein reside now? In the Obama administration, of course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights (The Declaration of Independence).

In the course of time, but not much, our statesmen deemed it necessary to explicitly state what these unalienable rights most assuredly are. Knowing that mischief is always just around the corner the question of what constitutes equality and wherein might this equality be found, inalienably, posed a superb question, no?

The treasure of their deliberations are consecrated in the “Bill Of Rights”. So precious a substance that nowhere had they been so unearthed by any government in the entirety of their splendor. Righteous brilliance, they exist beyond, independent, and prior to any government.

With exactness they present the conditions wherein liberty’s light might not only be diminished but extinguished. The right to speech, religion, assembly, and property inherent to the individual soul. Self evident aren’t they. And without which a “free press” and right “to petition the government” couldn’t exist except as mockery.

True, though these rights are interlocking, they are perennially in tension. So charged, the Judiciary is entrusted with maintaining their proper balance. Sadly, they have failed far too often. Who can say that free assembly, religion, and not less, property rights have been given their rightful accord. None, if he speak honestly. The principal of free speech has too often been given a priori privilege to the stain of the courts, especially the Supreme Court. But this is another matter.

The categorical necessity of speech, assembly, religion, and property for individual liberty is beyond authority, exclusive to that of nature and nature's God. So too their interlocking dependence--one falls, they all fall. Without private property where should we assemble, let alone worship, securely? Surely speech unformed to religion/worldview falls silent. Each enumerated right the indispensable gird of liberty, immutably interlocked as by necessity, these enumerated rights fasten and inform this nation's very foundation.

Prior to any government, the condition of Man: our speech inherent, so too our assembly, and as well our worldview expressed in formal religion or other, and most certainly our acquisition of knowledge and property: these are free-will’s modes of expression that can never be provided, but can be oppressed.

Government may acknowledge them to their great renown or oppress them to their great infamy. But bequeathed? Never!

So naturally, the Second Amendment, self defense, our protection of these inherent conditions is an equally necessary state of any living man or woman, again, prior to any government.

In light of this, the Founders’ concept of right, what sort of “right” is healthcare? Obviously, it is nothing of a sort, rather it is an allotment, a procurement, a requisition, a dole, a redistribution….of property. And to create such an entitlement, dole, property and assembly rights must be crushed, everyone’s property right, healthcare, must be terminated.

Any dole the government bequeaths it may as easily snatch. Any dole that can be bequeathed or snatched by government is obviously not innate to our own person such as speech, assembly, religion/worldview, and property. Such a thing can never properly be called a right, as rather it is a prerogative appropriated by the State.

Derivate prerogative: Derived solely from Government no such could ever be called rights as their derivative ephemerate insists.

But so insists the state not satiated with suppressing our innate free-will’s modes of expression, but claims a God’s power, rights not from nature and nature’s God, but rights assigned by and derived from Government/ false God, since from no other source, and truly no other allowable source, could any such hubristic assignment emanate.

Government is God? Perversion! Have we regressed so far to say that Government and God are synonymous? Healthcare proclaimed by Government/God is a right?

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with there bone… (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)

And so shorn lies our constitution, but with prayers awaiting action rests our redemption.

Where I might ask does Obama find his grant to give salvation collectively or otherwise? No earthly power can confer such, no matter what Marx and Engels have said. This “collective salvation” is not merely alien to the American compact signed and delivered in the American Constitution, but it is, if meant metaphysically, a grotesque lie, if not so meant, then the secularist should clarify himself, and since when, I might ask the empiricist, is the world according to him never perfect, anyway? For the empiricist the world never is nor could it ever be a possibility, but is always exact and perfect, as it perfectly exists by self-evident definition. Either or as they say, or should if they are honest. Can Darwin come out to play? Hmm, if possibility is never extant, as you cannot have your possibility and extantness too, then possibility is a metaphysical play, yes?

Well be that as it may, neither you, nor I, nor any may confer salvation upon anyone, nor more pertinently, is my salvation dependent upon you or anyone; you cannot share yours with me, confer yours upon me, or in anywise give me any part of any salvation you may have.

“Vergie, listening to him [a minister], was no longer Vergie Wrather of the Bottoms. She was an individual, a human being, precious in the sight of the Lord, a person from whom great things might come. She thought, I’m going back to school. Some way I’ll see it through.

“The decision was of the spirit (c.f. p. 74).”

The above is or rather was not so remarkable an idea or even concept that such a passage would be considered unusual or singularly profound. Such a passage would seem pedestrian, common during a previous era, as it is or at least was the common American understanding.

Or as Mr. Lincoln put it in a slightly different way:

Some time ago I mentioned that I was reading Dr. Zhivago, well I finished it some time ago. Superb novel, not perfect, but superb. And so Dr. Zhivago dies at the end, or at least near the end of the novel in an absurd setting, his friends and well-wishers come to mourn his death, celebrate his life, but the grand new society denies him a religious burial. No surprise, as we are in the midst of Lenin’s New Man world.

And what of Larisa his great romantic love?

And that’s it. Outside the collective she no longer existed. The state, the amoeba, had no use for her and therefore could not recognize her. She didn’t so much disappear, but for some select memories, she never was.

Riddle me this, when is man out of balance with nature according of course to the empiricist. Tick tock life is a clock, but whoever said “never” is the very clever knock off the old block. Because of course, “out of balance” is a possibility that can never be realized as nature is forbidden from transcending itself. And as Man is nature, so says the empiricist, then Man is always in balance and never out--Nature cannot transcend nature. Well so much for the Post-Moderns whether or no of a nominally professed spirituality or no.

Oh yes, I know, post-modernism is more resilient than that, too bad really, and I’m sure I’ve heard a couple of artful rebuttals, or so they seemed at the time, I think, too artful really to recall. But anyway as riddles go I have to admit Mr. Kant’s is far better.

So yes I do think it strange that Darwin had recourse, resorted to, a metaphysical concept for the linchpin of his theory, a scandal really, especially for the Neo-Darwinists. Now I’m not saying evolutionary theory is all wet or anything, but the metaphysical concept at its heart does change the dynamic a wee bit.

“Hey, what’s this, I thought we were talking about Kant’s riddle.”

So we are, so we are, but I guess I got a little ahead of myself, an evolutionary leap if you will. So where does this randomness reside? In what element or elements does it inhere? Of what property or properties does this randomness consist, are intrinsic to it if you will? Hmm, I can’t think any, can you? Nope. Well then what can we say of this randomness? Well for randomness to be random it must be unconditioned otherwise by definition it isn’t random, which is to say it can’t be conditioned by anything in the natural world (or we might ask where does the conditioning end), as such, perforce it is a metaphysical, transcendent, rather than any kind of natural or physical thing, force, what-have-you. So if it isn’t nothing whatsoever, whatever it possibly could be would be a metaphysical thing, property, whatever, transcendent of the natural world. Naturally there implications.

Now did Darwin know this when he presented his great theory? Who knows? But we do know that empiricists, atheists, secular mythio-traditionalist holders and whatever have hidden behind a seemingly innocuous word afraid of the either-or implications of their faith.

“You can’t say that!”

Anyway, no I didn’t say that it is wrong to celebrate one’s self identified inclusion in this or that population, celebrating an ethnic origin, culture, or whatever sub-group within the American Nation you wish to celebrate. When doing so we celebrate an indelible part of our identity as delimited by this or that group, but never ever our whole identity. Fine. Still, I would not vote for someone merely because he or she belonged to some sub-group that I too belonged. My sub-groups are not a valid basis as far as I’m concerned for justifying my vote, except for that sub-group that shares my political point-of-view. Oh, I’m sure there is elaboration available here, perhaps another time.

But really did we become a “cool” nation but for no other reason than we elected a black president? Really? Isn’t it a little unseemly and condescending to pat ourselves on the back because we elected a “black” president? Surely no attribute could be less important than the color of a man’s skin, which is to say none, as a qualification for public office, unless of course we are a terribly shallow and frivolous people. But apparently many in MSM believe so, and many in Academia too, and sadly sundry sophisticates sing the same chorus.

I know such thoughts are so yesterday, but as I mentioned previously just because President Obama is quick, quick, quick to scud over the peace that sleep and dreams may bring does not mean that either you or I must greet every morning with the dreariest red eye.

“…To tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists shouting identical syllables in unison.”

No, we did not suffer an invasion or occupation by outside forces: although Obama supporters would have us believe otherwise; that his appearance had restored order; that he had conquered. So his entrance to the city elicited imperator or its modern equivalent. Nor missing were vulgarities shouted by the base toward his predecessor and wife--as if they were Obama‘s prize presented to the people. Yes I found it as you think. His call to unity in Government, his spectacle, compelled me to leave the parade; leave it to others to participate. I stand athwart.

But all this is well known.

So I state neither now nor never will I ever admire or denigrate a Man’s ethnicity for the sake of his ethnicity. Now I am not so fallen as to not understand that there are many who are relieved and even joyed to acclaim as proof and fact that Obama is symbolic of our transcending our racist past. But I must seek pardon, for I never doubted that our society had long since abjured racism as a vehicle for public expression or approbation, so that any among us who captured our fancy would not be denied office on that account. And to dispense with the tedious, of course there are racists and there ever will be--such a thing can no more be eradicated than murder, or for that matter the poor.

But alas such stories have their complications and ironies. Not least is the official racialism at the core of post-modern liberalism, and consequently, the Democrat party, which to its shame has merely re-invented the Plantation structure: still averred for its order and more its dispersing of resources.

Regrettably, the Obama campaign, and even he himself with his allusive jokes, “oh by the way did I mention he’s black,” or the, “I look different than those other guys on the dollar bill,” put the spur to the Ministry of Propaganda, as if it really needed an invitation, and taking due heed, the moronic talking heads, left wing pundits, liberal celebrities, the likes of folks akin to Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Bill Maher piped for his voting. We should give the guy who looks different a chance we heard; that this election was all about race was said; that if he wasn’t elected it was because this country is racist was slurred; that his color would redeem this nation. So a racialist chorus pealed across the land. A retrograde and sordid appeal.

Though I concede our president was suave enough to merely intone his ethnicity with hardly disguised winks, while explicitly promising redemption, the aforementioned other sundry had no such caution. And so premised his election has redeemed the presidency, the nation, America. Yet I must ask how this earthly occurrence, this election, how has it redeemed the horror of slavery or the fallen dead in the Civil War? How indeed has his election redeemed America? The proper answer: Not one whit, not at all. His color is our hue, as indeed every hue of our nation is embedded in our very fiber, our very nation. No John Adams, no Barack Obama.

No such earthly power can redeem such earthly sins. Neither slavery, the war, nor the dead are justified by his election; who would diminish such suffering; only an ego maniac would suggest such; only the most cynical would allow anyone to believe such perfidy. Neither their lives nor their suffering is in anyway derivative to our own inflated egos, and it is just such thinking that has allowed, nay justified, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and other kindred spirits. Is it wrong to mark the exceptional occurrence? No. He is our first black President and as such confirms yet again our own Declaration Of Independence and Constitution, but he does not justify either text--they were justified at their writing or not at all.

Perforce I must believe that President Obama believes no such thing: that the racialism that appeared in his campaign, that he allowed to theme through MSM and other outlets was merely a necessary avenue leading to the Whitehouse. Sadly it was not necessary, and more lamentable, I must believe the President is unscrupulous and deceitful in his lust for power, I say must, because the alternative is so much worse.

Oh wait, you’re right, I forgot, he was merely saving the cornerstone of the Democrat Party, of the left you say. What would they do without racialist demagoguery? If he hadn’t and the left in general hadn’t tooted the horn of racialist politics it would have put to rot the cornerstone of Democrat structures, strategy, tactics.

Sadly I suppose you’re right. Lamentably, even redemption was never in the cards, there was no misguided but at least well intentioned motive. So even though he and they didn’t have to do it, they did.

*****

Oh I know that was so last week, or 10-days ago, but I protest, in geologic time it is damn immediate.

Anyway because only subsistence property is legitimate property, it is at the sufferance of our government that any and all of us citizens have any discretionary property, of which President Obama and Speaker Pelosi have decided Government suffers too much.

Travel costs will sky rocket. Business operating costs will go through the roof. And what do you suppose will happen to hospitals, clinics, and all manner of places that administer to the sick and infirm. How much energy do they use? How will they fare with the rolling brown/black outs that will be sure to come. And what of food production?

Office buildings, hotels, theme parks will they stay sustainable? Some? Most? Surely not all. What will that do to the economy.

Do you recreate: fish, hunt, hike, camp, water-ski, snow-ski, surf, hang glide, parachute, fly private planes; recreate with boats, snowmobiles, motor-cycles, quads, motor homes--forget about it. All of that is illegitimate. Do you barbecue? You’re the enemy. Do you go to museums, concerts, plays, sporting events? Forget about it. How about the movies? You are the enemy; we are the enemy; our society is the enemy. And don’t tell me this is about cooling the world’s temperature (astronomical hubris riding on hallucinatory air) by two tenths of one degree. That is pure deceit buttressed by delusion and ignorance.

Our government has met the enemy and that imbecile President Obama (I don’t care how intelligent he is, he is still an imbecile.) aided by the devil’s own idiot, the Speaker of the House Pelosi, declared the enemy is US.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: Raise energy taxes? Sue Opec Surely you jest. Lower speed limits to 55MPR? Why not 35MPH? No? 55MPH is not only not a sane energy plan, but is rather, Chinese Water Torture!

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: What in the world makes Senators Obama, Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Speaker Pelosie and company think we want petroleum less productive let alone more expensive by way of raised taxes. I don’t recall saying that we wanted to lose jobs. The petroleum you know will simply flow where it‘s most productive.

But enough of Barack Obama. Let’s talk about Michelle Obama. So as we all know Michelle Obama is all-in for the “struggle”.

Oh yes, I heard Senator Obama’s edict. Senator Obama says blah blah blah. Well in response I say blah, or in other words if you don’t want Michelle’s political formulations critiqued then tell her not to make political speeches, otherwise clam up, quit whining, have some gripe-water. It’s unbecoming in a presidential candidate, bans on this bans on that why not just ban free speech, your list is too large and ungainly, I can’t keep up. Besides, Michelle doesn’t strike me as a shrinking violet.

Sure upon many circumstances, I think, family members are not fair game without qualification, but the boundary is limited by the family member. So by dint of her own political elocutions she has entered the public square, and therefore, it would be disrespectful to not treat her as a participant. Senator Obama’s command then is an unwarranted transcursion of the public square’s limits. To the measure of Mrs. Obama’s public speech is to the measure we are right to respond.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: No we’re not clamoring for socialism (that would be Progressives). Actually we’re telling the government to get the heck out of the way so that private industry can provide the goods and services that fuels our dynamic economy.

But on such account as dullness her speech wasn’t unique. Too many political speeches fall victim to that malaise to raise so much as an eyebrow. Also, though it ought not need be said, to criticize a speech is not synonymous with taking a position one way or the other as concerns her person. I have more than a couple friends and family members whom though I’m fond of, like and love even, I would never ever vote for them to any political office.

Anyway, I read through her speech a couple of times and I noted the familiar political touch stones, objects, symbols as it were common to many political speeches. However, hers was not a political speech as much as a literary event.

Sure, it should have been readily apparent as after the preliminary stuff she starts her speech proper:

“And when you look over the year and what has happened, you realize just how amazing this journey is, so come with me for the last fifteen or so months when it started in Sprinfield, Illinois at Barack’s announcement in February, a year or so ago.”

And quickly and soon enough we are retailed with the Obama Odyssey, “an amazing journey” of sorts that actually begins in the middle and rings out epic over the course of many words and symbolic rhetoric. So yes former President Clinton was not altogether wrong when he described the Obama campaign as a “fairy tale,” he simply guessed wrong on the genre. An easiest enough mistake I think to make.

“And talent in the highest and broadest sense means a talent for life.” That sounds familiar doesn’t it? so familiar I can’t say if Boris Pasternak was the first to pen it (in the character of Yuri). Not a terribly bad saying in itself, but it does sound like one of those artsy clichés you would find on a coffee mug, or poster, or if willing to pay extra price, engraved on some stained glass artifact. It sounds like a cliché because it’s a mantra of the left, modern, post-modern or otherwise. It is at the core of the left’s world-view. Is it the sole symbol of that view? No, I wouldn’t be so bold to make that assertion.

But nonetheless as we’re talking not about a quality, but rather a reductionist caricature of life, claiming that life can be reduced to a “talent,” quickly enough life is understood as a craft. A craft that can be developed and mastered into a narrative. The Romantic hero struggling against circumstances, or perhaps the Epic hero struggling against circumstances.

So it is that Barack and Michelle have mastered the post-modern craft. So yes, I like more than one reader was taken with the political statement themed by “struggle,” “fear,” “challenge,” “hope,” etc. Yes, her dystopian landscape peopled by the trembling masses made its impression. It was inescapable I’m afraid.

“And see what happens when you live in a nation where the vast majority of Americans are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that nation is that people do become isolated.”

“And the problem with fear is that it cuts us off. Fear is the worst enemy. It cuts us off from one another and our own families, and our communities, and it has certainly cut us off from the rest of the world.”

Isolated, alienated, cut and divided. So in our singular, excuse me, “isolated,” existence Mrs. Obama goes on to say:

“They do live in a level of division [division, as in not unity, or is that labor?], because see, when you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, that you don’t have time to get to know your neighbor. You don’t have time to reach out and have conversations, to share stories. In fact, you feel very alone in your struggle, because you feel that somehow, it must be your fault that you’re struggling so.”

I was flinching soon enough by her repeated use of “struggle.” Soon enough I knew she was all-in for the “struggle.” And Marx’s “class struggle” felt like a bat hitting me over the head--thus the flinching. As in yes I get it, Barack and Michelle claim proletariat bona fides. It is the ground of “unity” from which they stand, which idea is more Hegleian than Marx, but they go together well, or so says Georg Lukacs, a dull and dreary Marxist critic, I know, but never mind that for now.

Are we really to believe living in Kansas qualifies as an unthinkable hardship? And though we commend Michelle’s father for providing for his family, does that not put him squarely in the American tradition? Have we come so far that we now equate paying back student loans as the thing of greatest hardship? Attending Ivy League schools qualifies as drudgery? Well…Since when is taking a job as a community organizer and living a middle class life the thing equated with great sacrifice. Making a choice and doing what you want to do is now the definition of sacrifice? Only in America.

Yes it is absurd, Mrs. Obama’s epic narrative indicts, refutes and is contradicted by the reality of her and Barack’s real life narrative, but fortunately Lukacs (to pick but one of many possible modern/post-modern thinkers) in an essay titled The Ideal of the Harmonious Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics comes to our aide a bit, albeit unwillingly (yea, I don‘t know whether I was feeling penitential myself, or just a little empathetic with Mr. Patterson, but reading Marx‘s tomb, er tome, was out of the question, not feeling that penitential today or yesterday): So Lukacs says,

“Gorky [no idea who he is, but he’s a writer] achieves a coincidence of the artistic and the political unity [unity?] that is neither automatic or mechanical [artful then?]….Thus a principle of artistic representation turns into a political and social principal.”

Art like everything then is derived from politics, everything is politics, either a unified singularity, or an illegitimate and wanting dichotomy. Such is the vision of the left where “think globally act locally” is the sole vision. Or to put it another way, the revolutionary makes art of his own life, and conversely every artist is a revolutionary, which is to say singular clap trap or worse.

Which may explain why the “they,” principal villain, of her epic morphs from the Clintons to this:

“And this is where Barack gets it. He understands that our challenge is us, that we have lost a sense of empathy.”

In a singular, political, artistic existence the villain must be us, society. What other villain could there be if (raise consciousness anyone?) our lives are wholly defined as a singular event rather than a dynamic dichotomy, let alone a manifold of expressions.

And so the Clintons lost because they were ran a political campaign that had some mythical (event staging) overtones against what Yuri (Dr. Zhivago) describes as:

“It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate, these private, individual revolutionaries, are flowing into it--the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice.”

The Clintons lost to a literary event, an artful fiction, which helps explain why our MSM, self defined intelligencia, and others are all agog. They hunger to make of themselves papyrus, canvas, marble, and things. Dr. Zhivago I think begins to see the folly in what he says above, as the passage in the previous post suggests, but we’ll have to see. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

But to answer the question of the Obama genre that eluded former President Clinton; theirs is not an epic at all, but rather a parody of an epic, a genre made famous by Alexander Pope and his mock epics.

So it is meet that we give Mr. Pope the last words from the Dunciad:

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often! No, no, no we didn’t ask you Obama, Reid, Pelosie, to tell us to go pound sand, thank you, and I’ve had quite enough cake lately. No we’re telling you to drill in our oil fields, get it, or you can go pound the pavement, thank you.

What’s that you say? Obama wasn’t calling his supporters bigots and racists, but McCain’s; that the only reason someone wouldn’t vote Obama is because he has an “uppity” wife and so forth…hmm, well never mi…, wait! never mind never mind, that’s still, at best, stridently bigoted, which is, shockingly, consistent with Obama’s at best bigoted remarks about voters “clinging to God and guns” and so forth Why it would seem there is a consistency of malicious intent. Well that’s racial healing for you.

Which reminds me, lest I should forget, here’s a PSA for our liberal friends, acquaintances and others: if for some reason you find yourself in a church preaching Revolutionary Theology, grounded in Marxism, and anchored in racism, Trinity Church (I don’t have to link that do I?) for example, may I suggest that you don’t walk out, but run, as walking may take you 20 years or so and by then the damage may well be done.

Well yes now that you mention it that structure does seem eerily familiar, appearances not withstanding.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: Supply and demand is a law of nature that not even King Obama and all his Minstrel Acolytes can ever hope to suspend.

Well of course Obama is a socialist, it would be fraudulent to say he wasn’t.

“What’s that?

“I said you’re interrupting the coronation of the ‘one we’ve been waiting for.’ The promised one!”

“Right. Sure, but can you do me a favor and turn your head when you gush. The splatter is making me nervous.”

“All America is all aswoon with the rising pandemonium.”

“Do tell.”

“You need to get on board”

“But I don’t like life boats.”

“You’d better, because the world is sinking.”

“Really? to where, pray tell, is it sinking?”

“You know where!”

“I didn’t say gesture wildly when gushing, I said please gush the other way, but anyway, I thought the waters were receding.”

“That’s right because the waters obey Obama.”

“Does Gore know about this?”

“Of course he’s on board; just like us bestowing dutiful hosannas, oblations…”

“I’m sure he is, but I was wondering is this a weekly, monthly or annual event?

“He’s the brightest star; he’s a happening.”

“Yes yes I know all the world is all a pandemonium and a pabulum and the glamourati and true believes are chanting he’s the one we’ve been waiting for, our enchanting Obama.”

“That’s right and you better too.”

“But is the chanting both a taxing and a tithing, or rather, should I say a waxing annuity?”

“What?”

“Or do we need a Clinton in time and a VP in place to bag it.”

“Clinton, I hate Clinton.”

“Exactly.”

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill Often: No dummies, not where the oil isn’t. 68-million acres of unknown or worse, no oil, is not the place to drill today. Are you Democrats sure you use 10 percent of your brains. I have my doubts, either you’re 5%’s or you’re duplicitous. Either way, if it’s all the same to you, we want the oil that we know we can get.

“ ‘That’s naïve,’ said Pogorevshikh [he’s a radical]. ‘What you call disorder is just as normal a state of things as the order you’ve been so keen about [he‘s speaking to Yuri Andreievich; the hero of the novel]. All this destruction--it’s a natural and preliminary stage of a broad creative plan. Society has not yet disintegrated sufficiently. If must fall to pieces completely, then a genuinely revolutionary government will put the pieces together and build on completely new foundations [Yuri, to his credit, wasn’t pleased with Pogo’s sanguine destruction].’ ”

Or to put it another way, after government has cleared away social, cultural, and economic norms and self regulating institutions then society, including those who “cling to guns and God” will clamor for relief and then we will be able, “yes we can,” to manipulate and stamp them into whatever we want.

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

With symbolic thinkers and their symbols (which pretty well accounts for the whole of progressives) it’s usually helpful to have a Rosetta Stone handy, sort of like having a GPS on board in a foreign country, otherwise, too easily, we may sway in sophistry and an inscrutable maze of cleverness.

What we should call the Obama economic vision is the rationing society. In fairness we will all be miserable, except for apparatchiks of course. Well people in a life boat generally are collectively miserable and you know, have to ration. Of course when you’re not really in a life boat, and there’s no cause for the discomfort of one, you have to force people into one. They won’t go willingly. Hmm, I wonder why. Anyway, the only way to get there is? Quite right, socialism, of one sort or another. You can’t make people ration without cause, that is, without a great big beast of a centralized state. Thus socialism.

And you know the thing about lifeboats, well at some point, sooner or later, you have to throw the infirm, the weak, the elderly, infants and so forth overboard.

But the real utility of the above Rosetta Stone is its clarity, transparent properties, which I put to use transcribing an Obama speech given in North Carolina:

"I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on her victory in the state of Indiana. And I want to thank the people of North Carolina for giving us a victory in a big state, a swing state, and a state where we will compete to win if I am the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

“More importantly, because of you, we have seen that it's possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems. We've seen that the American people aren't looking for more spin or more gimmicks, but honest answers about the challenges we face. That's what you've accomplished in this campaign, and that's how we'll revolutionize this country together.

"This has been one of the longest, most closely fought contests in history. And that's partly because we have such a formidable opponent in Senator Hillary Clinton. Tonight, many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided - that Senator Clinton's supporters will not support me, and that my supporters will not support her.

“Well I'm here tonight to tell you that I don't believe it. Yes, there have been bruised feelings on both sides. Yes, each side desperately wants their candidate to win. But ultimately, this race is not about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. This election is about you - the American people - and whether we will have a president and a party that can lead us toward a brighter future.

"The woman I met in Indiana who just lost her job, and her pension, and her insurance when the plant where she worked at her entire life closed down - she can't afford four more years of tax breaks for corporations like the one that shipped her job overseas. She needs us to give tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. She can't afford four more years of tax breaks for CEOs like the one who walked away from her company with a multi-million dollar bonus. She needs middle-class tax relief that will help her pay the skyrocketing price of groceries, and gas, and college tuition. That's why I'm running for President.

“The college student I met in Iowa who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill - she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and the wealthy; that allows insurance companies to discriminate and deny coverage to those Americans who need it most. She needs us to stand up to those insurance companies and pass a plan that lowers every family's premiums and gives every uninsured American the same kind of coverage that Members of Congress give themselves. That's why I'm running for President.

"The mother in Wisconsin who gave me a bracelet inscribed with the name of the son she lost in Iraq; the families who pray for their loved ones to come home; the heroes on their third and fourth and fifth tour of duty - they can't afford four more years of a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. They can't afford four more years of our veterans returning to broken-down barracks and substandard care. They need us to end a war that isn't making us safer. They need us to treat them with the care and respect they deserve. That's why I'm running for President.

“The people I've met in small towns and big cities across this country understand that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't expect it to. We believe in hard work. We believe in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

“But we also believe that we have a larger responsibility to one another as Americans - that America is a place - that America is the place - where you can make it if you try. That no matter how much money you start with or where you come from or who your parents are, opportunity is yours if you're willing to reach for it and work for it. It's the idea that while there are few guarantees in life, you should be able to count on a job that pays the bills; health care for when you need it; a pension for when you retire; an education for your children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential. That's the America we believe in.

“That's the America I know.

“This is the country that gave my grandfather a chance to go to college on the GI Bill when he came home from World War II; a country that gave him and my grandmother the chance to buy their first home with a loan from the government.

“This is the country that made it possible for my mother - a single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point - to send my sister and me to the best schools in the country on scholarships.

"This is the country that allowed my father-in-law - a city worker at a South Side water filtration plant - to provide for his wife and two children on a single salary. This is a man who was diagnosed at age thirty with multiple sclerosis - who relied on a walker to get himself to work. And yet, every day he went, and he labored, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the best colleges in the nation. It was a job that didn't just give him a paycheck, but a sense of dignity and self-worth. It was an America that didn't just reward wealth, but the work and the workers who created it.

“Somewhere along the way, between all the bickering and the influence-peddling and the game-playing of the last few decades, Washington and Wall Street have lost touch with these values. And while I honor John McCain's service to his country, his ideas for America are out of touch with these values. His plans for the future are nothing more than the failed policies of the past. And his plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.

“Yes, we know what's coming. We've seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain - to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

“This is what they will do - no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.

“We will end it this time not because I'm perfect - I think by now this campaign has reminded all of us of that. We will end it not by duplicating the same tactics and the same strategies as the other side, because that will just lead us down the same path of polarization and gridlock.

"The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it's not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda's leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it's not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies - like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

“I trust the American people to realize that while we don't need big government, we do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators; a government that stands up for the middle-class by giving them a tax break; a government that ensures that no American will ever lose their life savings just because their child gets sick. Security and opportunity; compassion and prosperity aren't liberal values or conservative values - they're American values.

“Most of all, I trust the American people's desire to no longer be defined by our differences. Because no matter where I've been in this country - whether it was the corn fields of Iowa or the textile mills of the Carolinas; the streets of San Antonio or the foothills of Georgia - I've found that while we may have different stories, we hold common hopes. We may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

“That's why I'm in this race. I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this moment in history. I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it's the only reason I'm standing here today. And I know the promise of America because I have lived it.

“It is the light of opportunity that led my father across an ocean.

“It is the founding ideals that the flag draped over my grandfather's coffin stands for - it is life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“So don't ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don't ever forget that this campaign is about you - about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream.

“Don't ever forget that we have a choice in this country - that we can choose not to be divided; that we can choose not to be afraid; that we can still choose this moment to finally come together and solve the problems we've talked about all those other years in all those other elections.

And as noble as all that may be, it put me in mind of biology. Yes I know it is a bit off the associative grid, what can I say? Now I don’t know about you, but as for me my most enduring memory is dissecting earth worms and frogs. Somehow or other we were supposed to identify this or that tripartite or other heart or some such organ. Wasn’t my best subject in high school, but it was easy to be the hero for a girl or two because of the ick factor.

Anyway, we’re talking about energy conversion for useful purposes. Yes, it’s at the cellular level, but then if the cells don’t get enough of what they need they get sick, with Scurvy or some such. Well actually if any cell doesn’t receive enough energy it gets sick, has malnutrition so to speak, and ultimately dies. And what’s good for the cell is good for you and me, not to mention the economy.

Energy we might justifiably say, and I see no reason not to, sustains life, ergo, Kyoto is immoral. Or as Groovy Al Gore would say, “let them eat ethanol.” Well, what would you say about a pie-in-the-sky fantasy which has zero practical benefit, but does manage to contract useful, gainful, food providing enterprise?

Non sequitur or not:

Well, it seems that Capitalism is not only the most efficient economy, but also the most moral as well!

Surprise, highway men and pirates, they’re always on the look out for leveraging, greasing an oily deal.

“It would be but a simple matter in arithmetic and government, however, to limit private fortune by law and take back the surplus of excess for the nation…

The Standard Oil Company would not go out of business if the government became the principal stockholder through a transfer of securities from Rockefeller to the government.”

Well yea, the idea is ancient (whether of the Sun King variety, Babylonian, etc., pick your poison, or any conflated state/society structure, though confessedly, this veneer was new and diversifying through various forms of socialism--Fabian, Marxist, etc. for a start, but not a finish, with people and resources belonging to the state) even at the time Henry H. Klien was writing, 1918, whose worldview, hauntingly enough, echoes fascism. He says, “they [the people] must be made to realize that socialism is a vision, Bolshevism means anarchy [excuse me?], and that a single tax is impracticable as an economic engine” (in his essay Why Private Fortunes Should Be Limited--Book Title and brief bio in post below).

Who pays? Don’t be silly. You and me, naturally: Um, can you say massive, unprecedented, redistribution of property--that is Ponzi scheme. But you will plant Eucalyptus trees in Brazil, and on farm land and old growth forests in Africa--so forth and so forth. Well done.

But as it is I’m out of energy--so…

As you well know the Dims are utterly aghast that the modern world uses economy driving fuels, energy, and are quite certain the sky is falling. Hence they have drafted without aide of much, meaning common sense, an energy plan that will benefit no one.

Revolutionizing, evolving certainly (using Marxist nomenclature that I’m sure our progressive friends applaud) into this:

Sustained Mobility, Or Going Do Doo

And there you have it our slide slow--if I had more energy I would supply more, but I’m restricted by green stricture, that and the scope of the Dim Energy Plan.